Sticky, Nimble, Frantic, Stuck: À l’intérieur and the Feel of Horror

Abstract

Yet it is this entirely a-referential, a-phenomenal, a-pathetic formalism that will win out in the battle among affects and find access to the moral world of practical reason, practical law, and rational politics. [...] Theoreticians of literature who fear they may have deserted or betrayed the world by being too formalistic are worrying about the wrong thing: in the spirit of Kant’s third Critique, they were not nearly formalistic enough. – Paul de Man, “Kant’s Materialism” (128)